To set up Windows 10 with a local account | News & opinion

Microsoft has always preferred you to sign in to your computer with a Microsoft account. Over time, however, it has become increasingly difficult to avoid this. Instead of offering the option to create a local user account on a new PC, Microsoft now asks you to sign in with a Microsoft account – without the ability to create a local account. However, there is a workaround.

This has recently made headlines, thanks to a now deleted Reddit post, although many users have known this for some time. A Microsoft account has some advantages, such as: For example, you can synchronize your settings between PCs. However, some users do not want to associate their account with the cloud. We can derive the following from our own tests with the latest Windows 1

0 installer:

If you are using Windows 10 Home

If you have the latest version of Windows 10 Home, version 1903 – also known as the May 2019 update – On a new computer PC you will be asked at the end of the installation process to log in with a Microsoft account. Unlike some older versions of the installer, there was no visible option to create a local account on our test computer.

If you click "Tell me more," Microsoft recommends that you sign in with a Microsoft account and then remove it from the app settings later, which is not exactly ideal.

There was only one workaround that allowed us to create a local account in our tests: Disconnect from the Internet. You can do this by either skipping the Wi-Fi login at the beginning of the setup wizard, disconnecting the Ethernet cable, or putting your laptop in airplane mode with a hardware switch (if your laptop has this option – mine had it on one) Function key in the upper row). Once you disconnect and click the Back button on the account creation page, a new screen appears where you can create a local account.

When you finish the setup process, you can reconnect the Internet after it has been copied to the Windows 10 desktop.

Using Windows 10 Pro

In our tests with Windows 10 Pro – using the latest installer available from Microsoft – I was able to click on the "Offline Account" option in the lower left corner of the screen. Some users have reported that this button has instead been replaced with the "Doman Join" button, which allows you to create a local account despite the confusing wording.

If these buttons do not exist for any reason You can continue to use the Internet Connection Disconnect described in the previous section for Windows 10 Pro.

Some users have reported that using an incorrect e-mail address or phone number to create a Microsoft account resulted in a request to enter local accounts, but that did not work in our tests. However, disconnecting from the Internet should work in almost any situation. This is the easiest way to work around Microsoft's existence on an online account. It was one thing to place the local account option under a link in the corner. It is quite another thing to hide it from users. That's just hostile.